Between The Lines
by Bertha Willis
Summary: L.M. Montgomery left much of Anne and Gilbert's relationship through all of the books to the imagination, with tantalizing little lines here and there. These stories will add some color to the empty spaces.
1. A Row on the Pond

**Hello, dear readers!**

**While I've written my last two stories, I've come across numerous passages in the Anne books that sparked my imagination, and it made me realize how little interaction there really is between Anne and Gilbert. So, I'm going to try to fill in some of what happened between the lines. The stories will start either with a quote from a book or an empty space that just asks to be filled.**

**Thank you to L.M. Montgomery for creating such delightful characters and leaving so much "scope for the imagination" in her stories.**

**A Row on the Pond**

_"__There's Gilbert coming up the lane," said Marilla. "If he wants you to go for a row on the pond mind you put on your coat and rubbers. There's a heavy dew tonight."_

\- _From Anne of Avonlea, Chapter XVII: A Chapter of Accidents_

"I'm beginning to think there's no sense in seeking out romance in Avonlea," Anne told Gilbert with a bit of an uncharacteristic scowl on her face. "It's the dearest place in the world, but I should have known something would prevent Mrs. Morgan from coming here."

Gilbert, as foretold by Marilla, had gone to Green Gables to see if Anne wanted to go out on the pond. But he also wanted to hear about how the visit of Anne's favorite authoress had gone, if for no other reason than his enjoyment of watching Anne as she soared in happiness.

But one look at the disappointed look on Anne's pale face told him all had not gone well with the much anticipated meal. As they walked to the Lake of Shining Waters, she told him her tale of woe, complete with sprained ankle, ruined pies, too-sweet peas, broken platter and inadequate conversation.

By the time they made it to the pond, the twilight had turned completely to moonlight. The reflection of the stars on the water glowed around them as Gilbert began rowing them in the dory.

He had just been thinking perhaps the romance of the evening would cure Anne's woes when her pronouncement that _there was no romance_ in Avonlea sunk his hopes to the bottom of Barry's Pond.

"But, Anne, look around," Gilbert entreated her. "How can you look at that sky and not see the magic in the moonlight? And I know you can imagine the dryads' convergence at the base of those trees along the shore. You know there is romance here."

For a moment, her starry eyes flashed, and he knew she was conjuring up a conversation of the dryads to which he referred. The thought of nymphs of any kind were irresistible to her. But then her eyes dulled again, and the scowl reappeared.

"Hmmph. Well, I'm certain none of Mrs. Morgan's heroines ever had to wear rubbers when they went out on a moonlight row," she said, kicking a boot out from under her skirts.

Gilbert nearly despaired of saving her spirit for the evening.

To make it worse, he was beginning to despair of Anne ever seeing _him_ as romantic enough for her. Certainly, he understood how amazing it was that she was there with him as they circled the pond. A year earlier, she wouldn't even speak to him, after all.

They had become friends so easily after she finally forgave him. Despite their years of silence, there had been no awkwardness but just a familiarity and kinship that filled their studies and rambles through Avonlea.

Somehow, though, Gilbert already sensed Anne did not see him in the same way he saw her. He knew he was in love with her, and those feelings grew more and more each moment he spent with her. He loved how he could talk to her about his ambitions and dreams and she understood. He loved making her laugh. He loved the way she'd argue with him, never trying to match his thoughts as the other girls did.

Or, rather, as the other girls used to do. Gilbert had no time for any of them: their nervous giggles, the fluttering of their lashes, the coquettish glances and the way they would act helpless around him. Only Anne, with her stubborn independence and fanciful visions and keen intelligence, seemed an enjoyable person with whom to spend his free moments. He had little time anymore for even Charlie and Fred and Moody and the rest of the fellows he'd grown up with.

But more than once he doubted the wisdom of trying to court a girl who refused to see him as a suitor at all. For he preferred to believe Anne was simply oblivious to his intentions, as it was more comfortable than believing she was dismissive of them. And certainly this night, it seemed she was insensible not only to Gilbert's romantic leanings toward her but also of all romance not derived from novels.

"But, Anne, you know Mrs. Morgan's characters aren't real people. Certainly if any of them lived here and wished to be out on such a damp night, beautiful though it may be, they'd put on rubbers, too. You know there is romance here," he said, trying desperately to think of some such example. "Maybe, maybe you're just looking in the wrong places for it."

Anne shook her head and studied her reflection in the still water below them.

"No, everything is just too commonplace here. I can't imagine any of the things in Mrs. Morgan's stories happening here, and I can't imagine anyone in Avonlea in them, either. We're all just too normal."

Gilbert was heartened momentarily by Anne's inclusion of herself with everyone else. But he knew no reflection of that on his part would improve her mood. So he said nothing and just continued to row, the occasional plop of the oars against the water the only sound on the pond.

"You know what happened with Davy and the pies reminded me … Davy reminds me a little of me when I was younger," he said. "I was quite prone to trouble, too. I remember once Mother made a cake for a Ladies' Aid supper. It looked delicious, and I thought she'd never notice if I just scraped a little frosting off the side. Of course, she couldn't help but notice when I came out of the kitchen with frosting all over my face."

He watched Anne as they circled the pond in the moonlight, her glowering countenance slowly softening as she watched the dark water below.

"I never would have guessed you to be as mischievous as Davy. I mean, other than our first meeting, you always seemed quite well behaved compared to the other boys."

"Well, what choice did I have? Who knows what might have struck me in the head if I hadn't shaped up?" Gilbert said with a sideways grin that revealed that maybe he wasn't quite done with mischief.

Anne rolled her eyes, but — he was relieved to see — she smiled, too.

Minutes passed in a silence neither felt the need to fill, until a giggle finally escaped Anne's lips.

"What's so funny now?" Gilbert asked, a smile creeping on his face as he watched Anne's cheerful outlook returning.

"I was just picturing Davy covered in pie. That boy is a perfect magnet for trouble, even when he isn't looking for it. And an optimist besides! He thought to ask Marilla if he could finish it off, since it was ruined."

Gilbert grinned at her, relieved at Anne's change of mood. He watched her for a moment and admired the sparkle the laughter returned to her eye and the soft flush on her cheeks and the way her hair shined against the moonlight.

"You know, I'm surprised you said you noticed I was well-behaved back when we were younger. I never knew you paid any attention to me at all back then," Gilbert said. "You certainly didn't seem to even know I was there."

Anne giggled, and Gilbert marveled at the silvery laughter echoing across the pond. Nothing had ever sounded as lovely to him as her laugh — and knowing that he had brought it about.

"Oh, I knew you were there. Otherwise I would have had the top of the class all to myself," Anne said looking out across the pond, now golden in the moonlight. "And of course, since no one else would ignore your existence, I had to hear about you from everyone else in Avonlea. You simply wouldn't go away altogether."

"Would you have wanted me to?"

"Oh, then I would have been quite happy," Anne answered quickly with a giggle. "But I suppose I wouldn't want you to now."

Gilbert did his best to control his smile and to not show how his heart was swelling with pride. That Anne viewed him as a friend he knew, but in her teasing answer he detected maybe she felt more affection for him than he realized.

They chatted lightly as he paddled them around the pond until finally the moon was high in the sky and Gilbert reluctantly headed for shore. He helped her out onto the ground and thrilled to the feel of her soft skin against his. He wondered for a moment if she would let him continue holding her hand. The question was answered quickly as she pulled away as always — but perhaps not as quickly as other times, he told himself.

As they walked back to Green Gables, Anne no longer looked as disgusted or as downhearted as she did when he arrived there. Gilbert thought how happy it would make him to be able to simply make her happy all the time.

"So, the world isn't such a bad place after all?" he asked as they got to the gate.

"Oh, of course not. There's laughter and beauty and fun … and good friends," she smiled a little shyly. "Thank you, Gilbert, for cheering me up. I'm not _quite_ in the depths of despair anymore."

He pondered for a moment how to respond. What would Anne do, for instance, if he took her hand again and kissed it? Or if he tried to hug her?

Gilbert knew well enough the evening he had managed to salvage would be lost again if he did anything like that, so he simply bid her good evening and turned to go.

But before he had gone four steps beyond the gate, he turned again.

"Just, don't completely give up on finding romance here, Anne," he said. "You wouldn't be _you_ then."

Anne nodded and smiled and waved as he turned to go.

Gilbert whistled as he walked home and let himself imagine a future when Anne might see the romance in an evening beneath the moonlight with him — a future where she wouldn't pull away at the touch of his hand. It seemed impossible, but again he reminded himself that simply talking to her seemed impossible such a short time ago.

"Doesn't hurt to dream," he said to himself.

…

More than one time in the coming years Gilbert would doubt the sentiment that it doesn't hurt to dream. For there certainly were painful times in that span, when it seemed as if that dream was a lost cause.

But six years later, he found himself back in that dory with Anne, whose sentiments had changed considerably since that long-ago night. "Isn't it just beautiful out here?" she asked him with a dreamy smile. "I always think the world bursts with romance on a night like this, with the moon and the stars shining on the water, and the crickets chirping their songs."

"Always?" Gilbert asked incredulously. "I certainly remember a night much like this one when you spent a half of an hour at least telling me there was no romance to be found in Avonlea."

Anne looked at him with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. It seemed impossible to her, the memory of that brief disappointment so faded among the bigger hurts and greater triumphs that came after.

"Remember, after Mrs. Morgan didn't show up, the first summer after you taught here?"

Anne laughed, the disillusionment of that day coming back to her. "Oh, I was young and foolish then, though," she said, holding her hands out to him as he stopped rowing. "I've learned a good deal in the intervening years."

Gilbert took the proffered hands and shaking his head mockingly. "To think it took you all those years to learn what I already knew back then."

"And what exactly did you know?"

Gilbert thought for a moment. "I knew that wherever you were there would be no shortage of romance and allurement and wonder. And I always figured if you would look just a little closer you'd see what right in front of you," he said, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss on her nose.

Anne smiled at him, a soft, loving smile she certainly hadn't given him that night years earlier. "I guess this is one time I'll just let you be right then."

**Stay tuned for my next story here, which will focus on the Anne of Windy Poplars' days and just might feature a cameo appearance by a certain melancholy gentleman …**


	2. One Weekend in May

**(I'm glad you all liked my first random Anne/Gilbert tale. Hopefully you'll like this one, too, though I haven't been happy with the way it came out — probably because it took so long to write. I haven't had a lot of extra time lately, but hopefully I can work out another one a little faster.**

**I don't know if it makes sense that Anne would have gone to Kingsport in this one, but … well, that's the way I went with it!)**

**One Weekend in May**

_"__Dearest:_

_"__The summer is over … the summer in which I have seen you only that week-end in May."_

\- _Anne of Windy Poplars, The Third Year, Chapter 1_

The station teemed with people, all awaiting the Friday night boat train from Prince Edward Island. The unseasonably warm day contributed to the stuffy air. The sun had set not long before, so it was not only crowded and stifling but also shadowy and murky.

Roy Gardner was not accustomed to such situations and could not for the life of him remember what had possessed him to agree to pick up Dorothy's friend from the train. Their driver may not have been available, but certainly someone else could have come down to the dingy station and waited for this unknown girl.

But, he would do anything for Dorothy — the one who had cheered him each time he had been sure his heartbreak would never cease. Of course, the worst case had been the last, Anne Shirley's refusal of his proposal in the pavilion in the park ripping open a wound that he had been certain would never heal. He no longer felt as tortured as he had those first weeks — and he no longer felt loving again was impossible — but there was a sting to the memory still. That Dorothy had sent him to meet a train from the Island was but a reminder of that.

Roy looked around at the crowd of people, unconsciously smoothed the carefully pressed jacket he wore and looked for something to occupy his time. He never deliberately tried to set himself out as better than the others around him, but somehow he felt he was just the same, making such common settings more irritating than they needed to be.

As Roy scanned the crowd, his eyes settled on a familiar looking man, tall and broad shouldered with brown hair. He looked far more comfortable than Roy felt, leaning back casually against a railing. Roy struggled to remember the fellow's name. Ah, yes, Gilbert Blythe, that was his name. An old friend of Anne's, Roy remembered, cursing himself silently for remembering another detail of her.

Rather than pass the time waiting for the train, Roy headed over to chat with Gilbert, who may not have had the social standing of Roy's usual circle but had proven himself to be clever enough at Redmond. He seemed the most likely person to talk to in the grayish station.

"Hello, Blythe, what brings you down to the station tonight?"

Gilbert turned, surprise to hear his name turning to shock over who was greeting him so warmly. He recovered quickly and shook the outstretched hand before him.

"Ah, hello. I'm just here to pick someone up. How about you?"

"I am playing chauffeur for my sister. A friend of hers was visiting the Island. That is your home province, too, is it not?" Roy asked, quite oblivious to Gilbert's hand fidgeting in discomfort at the railing.

"Yes, yes it is," Gilbert said, scanning the crowd. Only moments before, he had been willing the boat to get in a little faster. Now he hoped it held off until this awkward encounter ended. "I'll return there when I've completed medical school."

"A most noble profession," Roy said.

Gilbert nodded, wondering if there was a point to this conversation and also wondering how in the world Anne had spent so much time with such a bore.

"Whom did you say you were here to retrieve?" Roy asked.

Gilbert clenched his jaw a little and swallowed. "My … my fiancée. She's coming for the weekend."

The station began to fill with people disembarking from the boat train, and the din of a hundred conversations caused Roy to speak louder than his proper upbringing had taught.

"Oh, and who is the lucky girl?" Roy had barely finished asking the question before his eyes alighted on a familiar hue of red hair. He felt his jaw drop slightly. Of course — Dorothy hadn't sent him to pick up just any friend, he realized. The description she had given him must have been a ruse. Roy had known Dorothy kept in contact with Anne. Was it possible Anne regretted rejecting his proposal? And was coming here to rectify the situation?

For a moment, it seemed she was looking in his direction, a bright smile spreading across her face. She seemed to sparkle and shine, her eyes like stars stolen from the sky and a rosy blush staining her pale cheeks.

Roy returned the smile, his heart racing along with his mind. Of course, he'd forgive her for her folly. Perhaps an autumn wedding …

He remembered suddenly he had been in the midst of a conversation and turned to Gilbert, who hadn't answered his question. Gilbert's eyes were fixed in the same direction Roy's had been, with a joyful grin brightening his countenance. Roy turned to see if Gilbert's gaze answered his question, and that's when Roy realized Anne's smile — and an expression she certainly had never focused on him — was for the man beside him. He felt his heart drop, but he regained his composure as quickly as he could. Dozens of little moments filled his head, moments he hadn't noticed at the time, of a look of distraction on Anne's face when someone mentioned Gilbert or a different air about her when he was near. Roy had never put the pieces together until that moment.

"The lilies … at convocation? Those were from you, weren't they?" he asked somewhat quietly.

Gilbert couldn't see Anne anymore among the throng of people in the station and turned a little sheepishly toward Roy.

"Yes, they were," he said slowly. "But, please, don't think wrongly of Anne. I … I had been in love with her most of my life, and I had all but given up hoping she could ever return those feelings. But I was so proud of her still, and so, I sent them. I never imagined she'd carry them. It wasn't until the end of that summer that we were engaged."

Roy took a deep breath, the realization that Dorothy had, in fact, sent him on an ordinary errand settling in the pit of his stomach. He thought about the look on Anne's face, and he knew she had made the right decision two years ago. She looked lovely in love, and she hadn't looked quite like that with him. Blythe must be quite good to her, he thought, and it would be well worth it to find someone who looked at him like that. Now as he looked back, Roy had trouble remembering exactly what it was about Anne that had so enchanted him in the first place.

He extended his hand again. "Congratulations to you both, then. I wish you all the best."

Gilbert shook his hand. "Thank you."

Roy walked away, intent on finding this girl his sister had sent him for. Any lingering hope in a romantic reunion with Anne had been extinguished, but he did have a renewed hope that perhaps there was someone out there with whom he was meant to be, as Anne and Gilbert so obviously were.

His eyes scanned the crowd for the girl, whom Dorothy had described as pretty and petite, with brown hair, and carrying a flowered handbag. So intent he was in his search that he barely felt his legs catch on something on the ground, though he certainly felt himself falling forward to the dirty floor of the station.

Roy brushed himself off in disgust and turned to see what had caused his fall. A flowered handbag sat at his feet, its contents spilling out. He could just see tufts of brown hair showing under the hat of the woman trying to gather the items. She stood then, a heart-shaped face looking on with concern from beneath her hat.

"Are … are you OK?" she asked tentatively. Roy realized Anne likely would have laughed at such a display, but not this dignified lady.

Perhaps Dorothy had sent him for a reason after all.

…

A moment after Roy walked away, Anne reemerged through the crowd and made her way to Gilbert. After a quick embrace, he took her bags and steered her toward the door.

"Why do I feel as if we're trying to escape rather than just leave?" Anne asked in bewilderment as they darted toward a waiting carriage.

Gilbert laughed. "Because we are."

Anne looked at him quizzically.

"Unless you'd prefer we go back inside and you can talk to Roy Gardner."

…

Gilbert had told Anne at Christmas his plan to work on the railroad for the summer. It was an idea she had endorsed none too enthusiastically. She searched the school calendar for an opportunity to see him before he left, and, finding a long weekend at the end of May, had written Phil Blake asking for a place to stay for the weekend.

But the only weekend Anne could leave Summerside and Gilbert wasn't working at the hospital was one in which Phil and Jonas were taking their two little sons to Bolingbroke. So, instead Anne had to look for a hotel to stay for the three nights.

"If my boarding house had an extra room, I'm sure you could stay there. But, every room is occupied," Gilbert said.

"Ah, well, what would Mrs. Lynde say then, anyway?" Anne said, leaning in to kiss him.

After a bite of supper at restaurant by flickering candlelight, Gilbert found a hotel not far from his boarding house that had a room for Anne. He carried her bags into the narrow, dimly lit room, then quickly retreated to the doorway before the temptation _not_ to retreat to the doorway became too great.

"I should be going."

Anne followed him to the doorway and kissed him, perhaps a little longer than a polite goodnight kiss, her arms a little tighter around his neck, her body a little closer to his. After she pulled away, ever so slightly, Gilbert looked into her upturned face and saw that mischievous look — the one she wore when they sent their Avonlea Notes to Charlottetown, the one he only had ever seen on her face when she was scheming or thinking of something that would horrify most of the people who saw her only as the proper B.A. schoolmarm. He was quite certain he was the only one who ever saw that look and the only one who saw that side of her.

"Maybe you don't have to go. Couldn't you stay with me?" she said in a whisper as she dropped soft kisses against his cheek.

Gilbert closed his eyes for a moment, the next year and a half seeming longer than ever before.

"I would love to," he said, puling himself just far enough from her to look into her shining eyes. "But you know I can't. After all, what would Mrs. Lynde say then?"

…

The weekend passed simply enough, with no great adventures beyond just relishing being together.

They planned to meet in the park for an early morning walk on Saturday. The sun was barely above the horizon when Gilbert found Anne leaning against a tree, arms wrapped around her knees. He watched her for a moment before sitting down beside her.

"Where are you, Anne-girl?"

Anne turned to him with a dreamy smile and sighed.

"I was just imagining a beautiful Avonlea summer, spending my days lazing about and wandering the countryside with someone I love at my side."

It seemed to Gilbert at that moment that Anne's eyes had never been bigger or more alluring than they were at that moment. He frowned.

"Anne, you know why I'm not coming home this summer," he said, his voice pleading as he took her hand. "It's for us — to give us a start for our future."

Anne shook her head. "I told you, I don't need anything but you in my future," she said. "Especially if it means another summer away from you."

"It's not just that. I need to make enough money to pay for my last year here," Gilbert said. "And then, anything left over … well, I hoped to use it to find us a house … and for our honeymoon."

Gilbert's voice trailed off a little as he finished his explanation, but his eyes searched out Anne's as his thumb stroked the side of her hand. He wondered if Anne could feel his heart pounding as his thoughts slipped to that glorious day when he'd finally get to take Anne home, when all his dreams would be fulfilled. But as he saw her pink lips curl into a slight smile, he didn't have to wonder if her thoughts took the same vein as his.

He pulled her closer and kissed her, letting the rest of the world, their upcoming separation and all their worries slip away, if only for a moment.

When Anne pulled away from their kiss, she kept her hands at either side of his face.

"I understand. I just hate the thought of being without you any more than I already have been. And as for our honeymoon," she leaned in and kissed him again before continuing, a deep kiss that almost made him forget what the conversation had been about in the first place. "All I want is you then, too. After all this time apart, I don't want an extravagant wedding tour. I want to start our life together and be with you every day and put our House of Dreams in order and fall asleep with you each night and wake up with you each morning."

"Then that's all I want, too," Gilbert said.

…

All too quickly, Monday morning arrived. Gilbert took Anne back to the station, helped her get her bags situated and stood with her as she waited until the last call to board.

Anne looked up at him sadly.

"Christmas seems so far away," she said.

Gilbert could only nod in return, then pulled her close and held her until she had to leave.

**(Now, help me decide: Should the next story be a look at Diana's wedding or should we jump ahead to a tale out of Anne of Ingleside?)**


	3. Diana's Wedding

**(Thank you so much for the kind reviews on that last story. I felt it was far from my best work, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. I am much happier with this one and hope you are, too!)**

**Diana's Wedding**

_Something of their old comradeship had returned during the informal mirth of the evening. Oh, it was nice to be walking that well-known road with Gilbert again!_

\- _Anne of the Island, Diana's Wedding_

The tie was crooked. His jacket looked too big. And the spare bedroom at Orchard Slope was stifling. Had no one thought to open the window? He fidgeted in front of the mirror. That abominable tie would not stay straight!

Fred Wright watched from across the room. In all the memories he had of Gilbert Blythe — and he had quite a few from childhood on — he couldn't remember ever seeing him nervous. He could recite in front of crowds of any size and lead any group or team or gathering with confidence and ease. But nervous Gilbert most certainly was as he prepared for the wedding, and for reasons anyone in town could have guessed.

In all rights, Fred should have been the one fidgeting and pacing in front of the window. But, for once in his life, he felt calm. Yes, he could feel his face redden at the mere thought of the crowd gathered in parlor below, but he never had felt as collected and ready as he was at that moment.

Even amid his joy at finally ending his engagement to Diana — whose father's pronouncement that she couldn't marry until she was 21 had seemed understandable three years earlier and ridiculous with every passing day since — Fred worried over his friend. He had been concerned that perhaps the strain of seeing Anne under such circumstances would be painful for Gilbert, but Fred never expected to see him so uneasy.

And so he thought of the only thing he could to try to make Gilbert feel better.

"She's not happy, you know," Fred said plainly, as was the only way he said anything.

"Who? Diana?" Gilbert responded incredulously.

Fred stifled a laugh, knowing full well Gilbert knew who he was talking about.

"No, Anne. Diana says so all the time. She's not herself anymore. Anyone can see it."

"Oh?"

Gilbert didn't even question that Fred knew what had transpired between him and Anne. It was clear long ago that whatever Diana knew, Fred was sure to know, too.

What he did question was how everyone else in Avonlea seemed to know. Why, he had arrived only that morning, and he was quite certain that at least half the town had given him sympathetic nods and sad smiles as he passed by, or patted his arm as if he were at a funeral. His own mother had hugged him as he couldn't remember her hugging him since his grandfather died when he was a boy!

If Moody had figured it out, he wouldn't have spread it around. And that, of course, left Charlie Sloane, who most certainly would have carried that news in triumph. Gilbert remembered how he had ribbed Charlie after Anne's refusal of that fellow. What did you expect? Gilbert had asked him. What reason had she ever given you to believe she wanted to marry you?

Oh, how those laughs at Sloane's expense had come back to haunt him. He certainly never told Charlie what happened, but there was no doubt Charlie was the one who had guessed it and told it as if he knew it for fact.

And now Gilbert had to meet Anne out in the hall and shake hands with her and go into the parlor in front of a good percentage of the town as if she hadn't crushed his heart. Oh, there would be little gossipy whispers galore, that he knew. He turned back to the mirror and pulled on the tie again.

"Nah, Di talks about it all the time. 'Anne's just not herself lately,' she says," Fred said.

Gilbert turned away and rolled his eyes. Leave it to Fred to think that was enough to make him feel better. But somehow, it kind of did.

It wasn't that he didn't want Anne to be happy. He did. But he knew with every piece of his heart that still remained that she wouldn't be — couldn't be — happy with Gardner. Oh, he knew her social graces had come a long way from the little girl with the broken slate in her hands, but she'd never truly fit in among that crowd. She was too pure of heart, too whimsical. She liked to work among her flowers and dance among the trees and read her books and write her stories and dream her dreams. She'd be bored in an instant among the high-browed society.

Gilbert glanced out the window, beyond the orchard's snowy blooms to the walkway to the door.

"Minister's coming," he told Fred.

They could hear footsteps up the stairs as Mr. Barry walked past and entered another room down the hall Now it was Fred's turn to fidget, standing at the door as if he had forgotten how to turn a knob. His already red face seemed to somehow get even redder, and Gilbert smiled in spite of himself.

"Come on now. How hard can this be?" he said, biting back a laugh as he gently pushed Fred aside and opened the door. "One foot in front of the other. It can't be that bad."

"Just you wait," Fred sneered as he headed for the parlor. "You'll see what I'm going through someday."

Gilbert sighed. That didn't seem likely at the moment. He had tried, oh he had tried, to make himself believe he could fall in love with Christine Stuart or any of the other girls who batted their eyes at him. But he knew it was no use. Just the week prior, he had escorted the lovely daughter of his boss at the newspaper to a dance in Kingsport and had been so bored that it took everything in him not to fake an illness and walk himself back to his boarding house.

He stood at the top of the stairs and pondered his future. Perhaps there was some other girl out there — someone who had a spirit and intelligence like Anne. And looked like … like …

Anne.

She was walking toward him. Her dress was soft and white and clung to her as she walked. The little lacy sleeves made her long graceful arms seem even longer. Her hair glistened against the lilies of the valley tucked into its coils and curls.

And that's when he knew: There was no other girl, never would be any other girl, besides the one now standing before him.

He forced a smile and reached out to shake her hand and tried to act as nonchalant as he could. And she smiled back! A bright, genuine smile — not forced like his, or like the ones he often saw her wearing around Redmond — but authentic, as if she were happy to see him.

He steadied his arm as he felt her hand against it, not wanting her to feel the shaking he felt inside. How natural it felt to have her on his arm again! And how much he had missed her.

Gilbert recalled telling her that her friendship wasn't enough for him. He hadn't lied; that was how he felt. But he missed talking to her and laughing with her. He needed her in his life.

He needed his friend back. If he could have nothing more, he wanted at least that.

So, just as they approached the parlor door, Gilbert leaned over to Anne just slightly and whispered.

"Try not to make me look bad."

Anne choked back a laugh and grinned at him. "I'll do my best."

"To make me look bad?"

"Of course."

They both looked so happy when they entered the parlor that some of the people who had looked at Gilbert in sympathy wondered if perhaps the rumors had been wrong all along. And instead of whispering their gossip, they whispered their admiration for the well-matched pair strolling down the aisle.

…

Anne had dreaded this day for almost as long as she could remember — the day her dearest Diana would marry and leave and move on with her life.

But somehow, Anne couldn't quite muster the feelings of despair she had imagined. Perhaps it was how delighted Fred looked as he gazed at Diana as the minister began the ceremony; Anne knew he loved her friend and would keep her safe and happy.

Or, perhaps just as likely, she had begun to let Diana go long before. It had started with the Queen's class, when Diana would walk home alone while Anne continued her lessons. And the little gap grew greater when Anne was in Charlottetown. They were close when Anne taught in Avonlea, of course, but even then there were changes. When they'd walk home from AVIS functions or prayer meetings, Diana inevitably went with Fred, while Anne most often walked with … with …

With Gilbert.

It struck Anne for the first time that perhaps she hadn't felt the little chasm growing between herself and her bosom friend as acutely as she would have expected because the space left had been filled with a new friendship. A new friendship that had, in all honesty, been nearly as strong as her friendship with Diana. Oh, Diana would always be dear to her, her first real friend and the closest thing she'd ever have to a sister. But Gilbert had understood her in ways Diana never could. She never felt she had to translate her fancies when she talked to him, and there was no doubt he understood her ambitions.

She glanced across the altar, where Gilbert stood on the other side of Fred. She had missed him that summer, she realized, and the previous year. If only he could have just been _sensible_, Anne told herself.

He caught her eye then and winked, the same droll expression on his face as the first time she saw him. She fought off the urge to laugh as the minister got into the meat of his message.

"God desires for us to be joined with another in this manner, as Diana and Fred will be today. Let us read from Ecclesiastes, chapter four, verses nine through 12."

Anne had always delighted in the more poetic passages of the Bible, and there certainly were many such segments on love from which to choose. That particular scripture had never caught her fancy, lacking the flowery language she loved. But she listened.

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour," the minister began. "For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken."

She critiqued the verses in her mind as the minister continued. It was something she had never contemplated, not really. Three times men had asked for her hand in marriage, yet she never really had thought about what it would _mean_ to be married. Oh, she thought of romance, of flowers and poetry. But a marriage? She had no experience with such things. She certainly never had the opportunity to witness her own parents' marriage, and those of the couples that took her in during her childhood certainly were nothing she wanted to emulate.

Those verses spoke not of wooing and courtship but of what came after: a partnership of utility and service. Of walking hand in hand through life with another. That last bit sounded familiar, but Anne realized she had given little thought to what comes after the wedding. Her novels never covered that part of life; they left off as if nothing that followed was of any note.

What would it be like to share a life with someone else? To absorb someone else's triumphs and tribulations? To share a home with someone? A memory flashed in Anne's head of Diana telling her about her engagement and her plans for her future home. And Anne had started planning her own House of Dreams and … and …

Diana was handing her the bouquet. She and Fred were exchanging vows. The minister was pronouncing them man and wife. They were sharing a quick kiss. And Anne found herself back on Gilbert's arm and walking out of the parlor.

Gilbert was teasing her about looking like she was going to cry, and she was glaring at him in mock annoyance. And all was as it had been before but something had changed. She didn't know it, barely felt it, but something had started to transform during the ceremony, like a quiet revolution inside her mind.

But what she did know and did realize was perhaps she had never known as much about romance and love as she thought.

…

Gilbert watched the girls preparing for the bouquet toss with a small smile on his lips. There were the Pye girls, trying to act as if they couldn't care less to be there while making sure they stayed in the front. There was Minnie Mae, pulling her red-faced little friends into the fray. It seemed every Avonlea female 10 to 25 was bunched together hoping to grab that spray of pink roses.

And the only one Gilbert really saw was trying her best to fade into the background.

He could watch her now, when it was impossible for anyone to tell if he was watching her. Not like during the meal, when he had sat next to her and had to play at nonchalance, just like he had in their teaching days when he had perfected his act of wanting nothing more but to be her friend. He could make her laugh and not let show how his soul soared at the silvery sound. He could converse freely without giving her the impression that he was doing everything he could to memorize every word she said. But he couldn't look at her then, not really. Because if he did, then she'd know.

But now he had the opportunity to notice all the things he hadn't before. Her looks always had been the least of her many charms to him. But now, in the dusk, with the blue sky fading into yellow on the horizon behind her, he saw how she had grown into herself in the past year while he was trying not to look. Her starry eyes — the first thing about her with which he had fallen in love — looked just as unique and bright as the day he met her. But they no longer overshadowed the rest of her delicate white face, with its fine, high cheek bones and soft pink lips and soft rose cheeks. She seemed to stand taller, more sure of herself, and the lacy white dress revealed the figure of a woman rather than that of the girl she had been. Even her bronze hair seemed somehow more radiant.

She stayed always to the back of the crowd as the others jostled for position. Diana turned her back, and Anne moved almost imperceptibly in the opposite direction from where her friend's shoulders pointed. By the time the bouquet was in the air, she had separated herself from the swarm.

And in that separation Gilbert finally saw what he had never seen before. He always had known she wasn't like the other Avonlea girls, for any number of reasons. But catching that bouquet — like catching a man — wasn't what Anne wanted. How had he never realized that? All he had known was that he loved her, and he had thought maybe she felt the same for him; he never gave any thought to her desires. All at once he felt selfish and egotistical for not trying to give her what she wanted but instead trying to convince her to want what he wanted. Oh, for the chance to go back and keep himself from speaking! Or to at least give her the chance to figure out what she wanted before trying to make her decide.

The part of him that felt the fool wanted to disappear, to get back on that boat to Kingsport and as far from her as he could. But the part of him that couldn't let her go was watching her walk back toward him, and again he donned the persona of the old friend.

"You didn't make much of any effort, there," he teased.

"Josie has so little else to live for," Anne answered, nodding toward the victor with a mischievous smile.

But she knew, deep down, why she hadn't wanted to catch the bouquet. To have the good people of Avonlea asking when they'd be dancing at her wedding. To hear the whispers about her future, when the topic confused even her.

Diana pounced on Anne, and while the two girls — women, really — shared a goodbye hug, Gilbert shook Fred's hand. And the latter said in a quiet voice, "She was herself tonight." And Gilbert could only nod, his lips pursed and eyes grateful.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Wright were gone, and the crowd began to thin. Orchard Slope was returned to a semblance of order, and Gilbert walked with Anne toward Green Gables. He didn't ask if he could, and she didn't stop him. Somehow walking those paths they'd walk so many times before felt natural, no matter what else had passed between them.

They talked of classes and of how they had spent their summer so far.

"How are the other ladies of Patty's Place passing their vacations?" he asked her.

"They all went home for the summer, too. Phil, of course, is planning her wedding."

Gilbert looked at her in surprise. "To which of the victims?"

Anne laughed. "None of the old regulars. Jonas Blake is his name. He's a minister, or will be one soon."

Gilbert's wide-eyed expression made Anne laugh again. "Phil is marrying a minister?"

"Yes, oh and that's not the best of it. She always declared she would only marry a man who was good-looking and rich. Jonas is a gem of a fellow, but he's neither. But she's deliciously happy. She was so sure of what she wanted, only to find what she thought she wanted would never have done at all," Anne said.

Her eyes cast down in surprise as she finished and her cheeks flushed. Gilbert felt a flutter at his chest at Anne's reaction to her tale, and he wondered if perhaps Ms. Gordon was not the only one who hadn't known what she wanted in life.

Before he was ready to say goodbye, they were at Green Gables. He suggested a stroll down Lover's Lane to prolong the inevitable.

He found himself only half listening as Anne told him of the Valley Road School and of how changed she found Avonlea. His mind wandered to that terrible afternoon at Patty's Place as she talked. Looking back, he could see what he hadn't before — Anne trying desperately to spare his feelings and to cling to his friendship. He saw the confusion in her face and heard the anguish in her voice. Gilbert clenched his jaw at the awareness that his proposal hadn't hurt only him but the very person he wouldn't have hurt for all the world.

Then Anne sighed as she finished her musings. Gilbert searched for something to say and heard himself absently declare, "So wags the world."

Anne looked suddenly ill at ease, and he realized he again hadn't been listening to what she was really saying, just as he hadn't for the months leading up to his proposal. Hadn't she just, in her own round-about way, told him she missed those days when they were young and had the run of Avonlea? That she missed their friendship?

So he told her stories from his time in the newspaper office. Soon, she was laughing at his tale of putting the letters of a headline in the wrong order the first time he was tasked with helping on the press and of being berated by the bride whose wedding he had written up for the society pages who didn't appreciate him mistaking the delphiniums in her bouquet for larkspur.

How good it felt to laugh, really laugh, again, Anne thought. She never laughed as she did when she was with Gilbert.

They arrived back at the Green Gables gate, where they had stood and talked for hours in days gone by. Their laughter and chatter subsided and neither said anything for a moment, an awkward silence filling the space between them that seemed somehow to hold both a gulf and only a couple feet.

A goodbye never had seemed so uncomfortable. Anne wanted to find the words to ask him to write, remembering the emptiness she felt with each trip to the post office that yielded no word or sign from her old friend. But she felt she had no right to do so, and what would Christine think? Gilbert, meanwhile, fought the desire to tell her again that he loved her, having grasped finally that as well as he knew her there was much he didn't understand. And besides, he thought miserably, any notion she may ever have had of him likely had been dashed away the instant Gardner showed up.

Finally, Gilbert extended his hand and tried to stop the flush he felt creep to his cheek at the feel of Anne's skin meeting his. They parted as friends, but the gulf between them seemed to widen again with every step he took from Green Gables, with the knowledge that they may never spend another afternoon or evening together.

…

Anne stared at the ceiling. She had been in bed for an hour but her mind wouldn't rest. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the wedding and the minister's words.

She was struggling to bring back that vision of her House of Dreams, putting Roy beside her in it, of course. But try as she might, she couldn't see him sitting beside her as she read by candlelight; she couldn't feel his comfort as she cried, and she most certainly could not see him laughing with her over a memory.

"I'm just tired," she said to the darkness. "That's all that's the matter with me."

Anne didn't dwell on the uncomfortable thought that perhaps her imagination did have some limits.

When sleep finally overtook her, the visions she had been seeking came, in a way. She was walking through the orchard, small rows of chairs on either side. She looked to her right, through her veil, to a man walking by her side. The dream jumped to another vision, this time in an open room, where she sat beside him as they laughed over an article in the newspaper spread before them. Then she was in a bedroom, where he was holding her as she cried into his shoulder.

By the time the morning light fell over her eyes, the dreams had faded in their intensity, though the memory of them haunted her and made her heart race as she readied for the day. She vowed they were nothing but a remnant of the romance of the wedding. And even in the deepest recesses of her mind she wouldn't let herself admit who had been beside her.

That she still couldn't replace him with Roy even in her waking hours was something she just wouldn't contemplate at all.


	4. A Fortuitous Concatenation of Atoms

**(Thank you so much for the lovely reviews of that last chapter. I enjoyed writing it so much, and I'm glad you enjoyed reading it, too! This one probably will only make sense if you read the chapter to which it refers, because I've picked a lot of details from it. Hope you like it!)**

**A Fortuitous Concatenation of Atoms**

_"__God wouldn't let Mother die, would he, Susan?" asked a white-lipped Walter, looking at her with the grave intentness that made it very hard for Susan to utter her comforting lies. She was terribly afraid they were lies. Susan was a badly frightened woman. The nurse had shaken her head that afternoon. The doctor had refused to come down to supper._

\- _Anne of Ingleside, Chapter 25_

He felt like he was alone in the bedroom. Anne's shallow breaths and her occasional crackling, rumbling coughs were the only signs that he wasn't alone. But she couldn't talk to him, couldn't help settle his mind.

He knew there was nothing he could do but try to keep her comfortable. And in all reality, the nurse could have handled that. But he wasn't going to leave her side, no matter what delicacies Susan had prepared to try to entice him to come down.

Twice before he had thought he would lose her, first at little Joy's birth, then at Shirley's. From Joy's birth she had recovered quickly, at least physically. The loss of the baby had left its marks on both of their hearts, but Anne, far stronger than either of them had known before, had pulled herself up. After Shirley was born, Gilbert had watched helplessly for weeks, wondering if his wife could possibly regain her strength after the exertion of the difficult pregnancy and the even more difficult delivery. But she had, and had lived to add yet another blessed baby to their home.

But neither previous experience compared to the one now before him. How many patients had he lost to pneumonia that year? Enough that he knew there were few treatments that would help. Never before had he felt so helpless. Hadn't he wanted to be a doctor so he could fight illness? And now he couldn't even fight it well enough to save his beloved wife.

He watched her as she lay in the bed they had shared for so many years. To think that at one time losing her to someone else had been his greatest fear! It was nothing to the feeling of thinking he would lose her forever.

Such a thing seemed impossible. She was too full of life, with too much life left to live. How fair would it be for their children to grow up without her, as she had grown up without her parents? But it would be worse for their children, Gilbert thought miserably, because they had known what it was like to have a loving mother. How would they manage without her? How would he manage without her?

He exchanged the cloth on her forehead with a new, cold one, the old one left warm from her burning skin. Then he dipped the old cloth in cool water and dabbed it along her neck and arms. Her body shivered in response before she coughed again, the rattling sound breaking his heart.

He scooted his chair closer to the bed and took Anne's hand again, her pale skin soft against his. Her fingers curled against his, but there was no pressure. He had never seen her so weak

Could it have been only days earlier when she had glided into his office and dropped onto the couch beside him?

"Rilla and Shirley finally went down for their afternoon naps, and the rest ran for the Valley at the first opportunity," she had told him as he handed her a medical journal, marked to an article on which he apparently wanted her opinion.

That had been nothing out of the ordinary; she enjoyed reading up on the advancements in his field, and there was no one he'd rather discuss things with than her.

"What a horrible thought!" she had proclaimed almost immediately upon reading the article. "How on earth could anyone think that there was nothing to life but a lucky combination of elements? What kind of man would write such a thing? Why, how could someone so lacking in human emotions make it so far in life! 'Delicately balanced organic chemistry' couldn't account for dreams and art and all the beauty in the world."

She had paused for a moment to blow her nose and appeared to be ready to launch into a further tirade over Dr. Von Bemburg's proclamations. Then she had studied Gilbert for a moment and upon seeing his twitching lips instead swatted him with the journal in her hands.

"You are horrible," she had said, trying her best not to smile — and failing at the attempt. "Why must you take such pleasure in aggravating me?"

"Old habits die hard, I suppose," he had replied, putting his arm around her and kissing the top of her head. "That, and for love of that fire that erupts in your eyes whenever I do succeed. But I did think it was an interesting philosophical perspective to consider."

"A ridiculous philosophical perspective to consider, I think you mean. All the wonders in this world, all the variations in people and … and the pain, and the love! Why, that poor man must not have a single person to care about in the world to believe that life could come down to such basic notions. Just look around and you can see all the evidence you should need that life is so, so much more than that."

Gilbert had known so then, of course, and he didn't need to look any farther than the woman beside him. But he realized it all the more as he watched her feverish and gasping from air, wondering if she had dreamed her last dream, danced her last dance.

It was that last thought, of her last dance, that made him smile in spite of himself, at the memory of later that same night when they went to Charlottetown and she wore that sequined dress. Oh, how he had teased her about that dress before it was finished, questioning whether it was appropriate for a mother of six to wear something as flashy as that robin's-egg blue dress, with its patterns of silver sparkles. He didn't mean it, and she didn't think he did; of course, even if he had meant it she was not one for asking her husband's permission.

But when he had walked into their bedroom and saw her wearing it for the first time, it took all he had to maintain his nonchalant attitude and not sweep her up into his arms.

He couldn't keep it to himself, though as they twirled together on the dance floor at the party, the lights reflecting off the sequins and off the similar sparkles in her gray eyes. He had pulled her closer than may have been considered proper and brought his lips to her ear.

"It is rather gratifying to know I'm here with the most beautiful woman in the room."

She had looked up at him, her eyes coy and smile bright. "Darling, I thought you weren't going to pay me any more compliments tonight."

He could only shrug and smile down at her. "Candlelight makes a man do foolish things."

They hadn't danced any more that night, the exertion worsening the little cough that had been nagging her for days. And he thought she looked a little pale as she rested on his shoulder on the train ride back to Glen St. Mary.

Within a few days, the little cough and sniffling had morphed into something far more sinister. Gilbert had wasted no time in calling in a trained nurse to help out, and for once Anne didn't fight him on his order that she stay in bed. That worried him even more; nothing short of a deadly disease could keep Anne idle.

And now she had no choice but to be idle — couldn't do anything else even if she wanted. Gilbert watched as she opened her eyes and tried to speak. But another round of painful coughs kept her thoughts sealed up inside her.

Gilbert sat down beside her on the bed and helped her sit up against him. The three pillows already stacked up behind her weren't keeping her from coughing, but maybe he could keep the air flowing through her long enough to fight off the infection. The heat of her fever radiated into him, and her wheezing breaths shook him.

She looked up at him, her eyes desperate and distressed as she tried to catch her breath. He held her tighter and said a silent prayer.

"Anne, you've got to fight for me, please. I know you can beat this. You have to beat this. I can't live without you, Anne. And the children …" Gilbert felt tears building in his eyes at the thought of having to tell the children that … that … Or of making that call to Green Gables. But he couldn't think that way. She was still here. "And I'm sure you plan to wear that dress again. You'd never get a new dress to aggravate me just once."

Anne turned again and gave a small, sad smile resting her head against his chest. Gilbert ran his hand over her hair, loose against her shoulders.

"I also distinctly remember you writing me, in the first letter you wrote me from Summerside, that we'd laugh about our funny adventures in old age, Anne. I can't laugh with you if you're not here, you know … I don't know if I'd be able to laugh at all without you. You've got to beat this, Anne."

He felt her nod weakly against him, and he could see a tear glistening against her cheek.

Gilbert spent the next hours holding Anne and recalling those funny stories from their lives together. A few times he could see her lips upturn in attempt of a smile, but more often she struggled to catch her breath.

She fell asleep, heat still radiating off her. Gilbert thought of all the memories of her, but more of all the memories they had left to make. When he remembered her holding their babies, he pictured her gloating over their grandchildren. The flowers of yesterday became the gardens of tomorrow. He could see her sitting beside him before the fireplace, just the two of them again, as it had been in the beginning in their House of Dreams.

Just as it had been years before, there was no version of his future he could imagine without Anne by his side.

"You just can't go, Anne. Nothing will be of any value without you," he whispered into the room, dark except for where the moon had cast its gold light through the window.

The night crept on, and Gilbert listed intently to every struggled breath. It wasn't until the first amber rays of early sun began filtering into the bedroom that he realized that the breaths were no longer quite as labored. He gasped at the realization that there were tiny beads of sweat on her forehead.

He held her a little tighter for a moment, then laid her against her pillows and moved back to the chair still sitting beside the bed. She was still pale, still weak, but he had watched enough patients recover to know she'd be herself again before too long.

He took her hand again and was surprised to feel her squeeze his fingers.

He smiled down at her through joyful tears as he watched those gray eyes he loved flutter open. Then he couldn't help but laugh a little at the words that came from the still-raspy voice.

"I couldn't have you cast it up that I never listened to you," she said with a weak smile. "And I do want to wear that dress again."


	5. Mayflowers

**(Thank you as always for your lovely reviews! I wasn't sure whether such a melancholy chapter would be enjoyable, but there is always some happiness even among sorrow and fear, I think. This chapter originally was going to be a nice, light one but kept growing into something else. Enjoy!)**

**Mayflowers**

_"__I was offered some Mayflowers, too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you the person's name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips."_

\- _Anne of Green Gables, Chapter XX, A Good Imagination Gone Wrong_

Had Anne Shirley not, just one year earlier, resided in a dreary orphanage with a dreary little yard, perhaps the hollow, with its dark green moss and soft green new grass, wouldn't have seemed such a magnificent place. And perhaps the tiny new leaves and darling little blossoms wouldn't have seemed like something straight out of a storybook.

But as it was, the lush, open landscape was giving her one of the aches that only came about when she spied something of the perfect loveliness that spoke to her soul.

Even those silly boys, with their silly dares — who but Charlie Sloane would care on a bright spring day whether Arty Gillis could hop over an old well! — could not diminish the delicious shiver that came when one ventured out of the warm sunshine and into the slight chill of the shadows beneath the trees.

The green and the sun and the warmth and the chill and a sweet earthy scent whispered that spring had come to stay at last, but it was the mayflowers, white and pink and plentiful, that shouted the fact.

"Oh, Diana, look at their perfect little shape. They must be stars that haven't become stars yet. When they fade into summer, they just drift up to the heavens!"

"They do look lovely in a vase on the mantle," said Diana, ever practical.

Anne turned to wander alone with her musings, not knowing that she was to witness Mr. Phillips' attempt at romance with the fair Prissy. Her dislike for her teacher aside, the romantic in Anne thrilled to the scene. A little flutter in her heart at the thought of being offered flowers — and mayflowers in particular — nearly pained her. She imagined herself a beautiful, proper lady, puffed sleeves and all, with a mysterious man presenting her with a perfect spray. Then she sighed, quite certain such a thing never would come to pass.

One would have had be particularly observant to notice the wistfulness that passed over her face as she sighed and even more knowledgeable about the workings of Anne to realize the reason for that wistfulness. But it just so happened that there was one other spectator to Mr. Phillips' wooing who was gifted in such matters.

The careful observer had been watching Anne out of the corner of his eye as he jostled and joked with the other boys. That was nothing new. Gilbert Blythe had been watching Anne Shirley since before Anne Shirley had decided to pretend Gilbert Blythe did not exist. And as such an observer, he had noticed that she thrilled to all things of beauty. Unbeknownst to her, he had watched her standing on the bridge, looking out over the reflections on Barry's Pond for 10 full minutes in the fall, and he had come upon her marveling at the snow-covered trees in the woods in the winter before quickly retreating to avoid the haughty turn she was sure to execute should she see him there.

When Gilbert saw Anne's eyes flutter to the flowers in Prissy Andrews' hands, he could feel her longing for someone else to recognize the beauty and romance that had for so long been only in her mind. And without another thought, he snuck away from his friends and began gathering all the mayflowers he could hold out of the shadowy little patch behind a cluster of birch trees.

Bunches of white and pink flowers overflowed from his arms as he tiptoed toward Anne. She was gazing up at the feathery white clouds hanging against the blue sky.

"Anne, I thought maybe … I mean … do you want … I mean, I want you to have these," he stammered.

Anne had turned upon hearing her name and at first saw only the flowers. Gilbert's heart soared as he saw the delighted look on her face, only to crash a moment later when Anne realized who was offering her the flowers and turned on her heel, her chin pointed to the sky.

"No, I most certainly do not," she said as she walked away.

Gilbert let the flowers slip from his fingers as she walked away. Any number of the other girls would gladly have taken the flowers from him, so his efforts would not have to have gone for naught. But it wasn't the other girls he had thought of as he plucked them.

He sighed as he walked back toward his friends and reflected that at least there had been that moment, the quickest of seconds, in which she wanted to say yes.

…

_But grass was growing green in sheltered spots and Gilbert had found some pale, sweet arbutus in a hidden corner. He came up from the park, his hands full of it. … Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers._

\- _Anne of the Island, Chapter XX, Gilbert Speaks_

It was all the fault of the mayflowers, Gilbert reflected later as he sat in his room, head in his hands. They had seemed like a sign when he saw them, there protected by a patch of trees in a shadowy corner of the park. For months, he had looked for a sign that it was the right time to tell Anne how he really felt. In the back of his mind, he had a little speech prepared, telling her how he dreamed of having her beside him for all time, but he had never gotten a chance to tell her. Someone else always was around.

Today she had been alone, sitting on the boulder in the orchard. It seemed providential. First the mayflowers, now this stroke of luck, he had thought.

But now he saw that perhaps the mayflowers hadn't been a sign of good luck, of destiny. Unless it was his destiny to be rejected by her. Which seemed possible.

He remembered the way it had felt the first time she had spurned his offer of the flowers. This was the same but a thousand times worse. For both times, it wasn't the flowers she had turned down. It was him.

No, it couldn't have been the flowers. For each spring since she had forgiven him, he had hunted down the earliest blooms of the trailing arbutus and brought them to her. And each time, he had seen the delight in her eyes. And now he knew for sure, that delight had been for the flowers, not for him.

…

The next spring, the sight of the pale pink flowers poking out from their secret corners mocked him. He wouldn't be picking any this time, he thought. Perhaps he'd never pick them again. It wasn't his place anymore, if it ever was. And Gilbert was certain Gardner wouldn't be picking any either; instead, he'd shower Anne with roses and violets and orchids and all the things Gilbert couldn't give her.

He wondered if she thought of him when she saw them coming up near Patty's Place in the little groves from which he had picked hers. But he was quite sure she didn't. And he was quite certain that if he had walked back to the orchard after that fateful day, the last ones he'd ever pick her would have been there on the boulder, discarded and forgotten. Just like him.

He couldn't know the hollow feeling at the pit of her stomach each time she breathed in their sweet scent and the way her jaw would clench each time she picked them for herself. How could he? Even she didn't know it.

…

_Captain Jim came along another evening to bring Anne some mayflowers. … "How kind and thoughtful you are, Captain Jim. Nobody else — not even Gilbert" — with a shake of her head at him — "remembered that I always long for mayflowers in spring."_

\- _Anne's House of Dreams, Chapter XVIII, Spring Days_

She was only teasing him, of course. In a way, that is. Ever since little blades of green had started poking up around Four Winds, she had expected Gilbert to arrive home, arms filled with the sweet starry flowers like he had all those times before Redmond. But he never had. Anne knew he was busy — all the folks around Four Winds and Glen St. Mary and a good portion of the over harbor folks called him for their every ache and pain and fever. But had he forgotten how much she loved them?

But then she looked at Gilbert as Captain Jim explained where he found them, and she saw the pained look pass over Gilbert's face. And she remembered the last time he had brought her mayflowers. Patty's Place. The orchard. For two springs after, they had little to do with each other, and besides the lilies he sent her for graduation, there were no other flowers. And then the three years that followed, their springs were separated by an ocean.

She met his eyes as Captain Jim continued his stories. In the bitten lip and creased forehead and lowered eyes, Gilbert saw her sorrow at what she'd said, and he knew she was remembering what he remembered every time he saw those flowers scattered like a carpet in the shadows.

It had been years now, six years. And the disappointment and sorrow he had felt had been washed away by the joys that followed and by the love he felt every time Anne met him down the path when he came home and each time he felt her move closer to him when he got to bed at night. But somewhere, deep down, the smallest bit of that empty feeling remained, brought out only by those white and pink flowers.

Gilbert gave her a half smile and a wink, but he could tell she wasn't going to let it go. And when Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia had gone and Susan had retired to her room, Anne went to him and laid her hand on his arm. He turned to see those starry gray eyes looking up into his with a sorrowful expression.

"Gilbert, I didn't mean …"

He cut her off with a kiss, his hand on her growing abdomen.

"Don't," he said with a smile as he slowly pulled away from her lips. "I let it go a long time ago. I didn't deserve you then. And it was all worth it. You're here, and I'm here. And …"

He patted the bump where their baby slept. "You've made me happier than I ever knew possible."

And when Anne threw her arms around his neck, Gilbert felt that empty feeling fill up a little bit more.

_"__Mummy," he said sleepily, "of course I'll bring you mayflowers next spring … every spring. You can depend on me."_

\- _Anne of Ingleside, Chapter 6_

Little Jem — the little would persist always in Anne's mind if not in her words despite her eldest son's protests — was now the one who came to her bearing mayflowers. Only 7 years old, he already knew every hollow and every tree around Ingleside.

He couldn't remember the first time he had "brought" his mother mayflowers. He had been but a toddler, a lisping, lovable 2-year-old, when his father had helped him pick them and directed him to take them to Anne. The next year he had done the same, but by the time he was 4, Jem declared he could "get Mummy's flowers all by myself."

Gilbert proudly let him. What a sturdy little boy he was, a delightful mix of his father's practicality and his mother's romance. He had been quick to help with the little brother and sisters that had been added to his family by that time, but he saved time for his adventures and imaginings around the Ingleside yard and the Hollow.

As he had strode away, Gilbert thought back on all the times he had been the one hoping to see that gleam in Anne's eyes. From childhood, when she wouldn't look his way, to their friendship, when he wanted to make himself worthy of her, to college, when he would have done anything to make her fall in love with him.

He never had taken her the mayflowers after they were married. The spring after Captain Jim's offering to her, he had been tied up with an outbreak of influenza, and he had walked on eggshells before his wife after their disagreement over Dick Moore's treatment.

And instead of taking the mayflowers to Anne the next spring, he had taken Anne to the mayflowers. They left Susan at the helm of Ingleside and in careful watch of Jem, and they stole away hand in hand like two children off for an adventure.

Gilbert knew where he was taking her for their picnic, to the shadowy spot in the Hollow where the mayflowers carpeted the ground. But Anne spotted the flowers before he did and danced off to them like a nymph, bending to breathe in their sweet fragrance.

He caught up in due time and grinned at the joy written across her face, her eyes wide and starry and her cheeks just a little flushed. She hadn't picked any of the flowers herself, so he plucked one and ran it into her hair, just above her left ear.

Anne caught his hand in hers and looked up into his hazel eyes, still so filled with love for her. She wrapped her other hand around him, stroking the soft brown curls at the back of his head and pulling him into a long kiss before pulling him down among the flowers. The picnic was forgotten for the moment, the blanket put to better use.

In years after, Gilbert would wonder more than once if that tryst among the mayflowers had made some impression on the soul of the baby already taking shape within his wife. Perhaps Walter's love of beauty and romance had come from that moment when his father finally made peace again with the arbutus.

The next year, a late frost stole away the mayflowers before Gilbert could bring them to Anne. And after that, he began training Jem to take his place. And as the years went on, he brought her other flowers and jewelry and gifts. But not the mayflowers. Jem always found them first.

And each time Gilbert saw them on the mantle when he arrived home, Anne would pull him into an embrace and kiss him, much longer than a busy mother of six had time for. Because he might not have brought her the mayflowers, but they always had been from him.

_The mayflowers bloomed in the secret nooks of Rainbow Valley. Rilla was watching for them. Jem had once taken his mother the earliest mayflowers; Walter brought them to her when Jem was gone; last spring, Shirley had sought them out for her; now, Rilla thought she must take the boys' place in this. But before she had discovered any, Bruce Meredith came to Ingleside one twilight with his hands full of delicate pink sprays. He stalked up the steps of the veranda and laid them on Mrs. Blythe's lap._

_"__Because Shirley isn't here to bring them," he said in his funny, shy, blunt way._

_"__And you thought of this, you darling," said Anne, her lips quivering, as she looked at the stocky, black-browed little chap, standing before her, with his hands thrust into his pockets._

\- _Rilla of Ingleside, Chapter XXV, Shirley Goes_

Rilla hadn't been the only one watching for the mayflowers in vain. Her father had taken to walking through Rainbow Valley when no one was about, looking for the flowers that might, if only for a moment, return the bright smile to his wife's pale, sad face.

He knew any joy he could bring her wouldn't last long — their three boys were gone, one to never return, and they had to watch their daughters' girlhoods slip away, replaced with worry and despair. But he hoped maybe he could take her back, for just a moment, to the days when his biggest worry had been making himself worthy for his queen and her biggest worry was him opening his mouth.

There was no disappointment, however, in being beaten to the punch by the neighbor boy, and in some ways, Gilbert knew seeing the sweet gesture inspired by her sons was better for Anne even than her husband bringing her the flowers would have been. And again she kissed him long and joyfully in the shadows of Ingleside, something easier accomplished in a nearly empty house than in the crowded one of days gone by, and for a moment, he saw the laughter and joy back in her eyes.

…

Gilbert tried to hold on to that moment in the months that would come, when Jem was missing and losing two boys or more to the horrors across the ocean seemed a growing possibility. But, like all things, the dark days ended, and Jem came home not among the mayflowers but among the violets in late spring. Then Shirley came home, too, and for a brief time, they all were together again, all but the black-haired boy who never would return.

But life goes on, and when the next spring came, the house was desolate. Jem and Shirley were at Redmond, Nan and Di were teaching, and little Rilla was married in Toronto.

Anne looked wistfully at the empty Ingleside lawn that once had been filled with the chatter of children and the laughter of family and friends. Life was returning to a new normal, because though the white snow gives way to green grass each year, nothing is ever quite the same from year to year. Something old always is gone, with something new in its place.

One would have to be particularly observant to see that Anne wasn't necessarily missing just the children she had borne but all the years gone by and the simple, innocent joys of spring that could never be quite as simple or innocent as they once had been.

But such an observer had just come up the drive and instead of going to his wife straight away, he snuck to Rainbow Valley and filled his arms with the new blooms of white and pink flowers. Then he tiptoed to where Anne was sitting in the sun on the lawn.

Gilbert touched her arm as he crouched down beside her. He watched her smile grow and her eyes fill with tears as he handed her the mayflowers.

"I thought you might like these," he said as he smiled down at her.

"I always have," she replied as she leaned into his chest. "From you, always."


	6. Christmas Future

**(I am completely overwhelmed by the reviews on that last chapter. I'm so glad you all liked my ramblings on mayflowers. I think I had to write it because spring seems to have finally come to stay in my cold little part of the world! But, I'm going to jump to Christmas for this one. Unlike the other chapters here, the lines I'm using to start this one has very little to do with the story; the real story is an empty space where something should be!**

**There's a gap in Anne of Windy Poplars (Willows, if you prefer) from November to March of Anne's last year in Summerside. So, I'm diving in to that last Christmas. I've been hindered slightly by toddler-induced sleep deprivation, so if this doesn't flow … well, nothing coming out of my brain in the past week seems to!)**

**Christmas Future**

_Dovie was quite all right as soon as she found herself irrevocably married to Jarvis. What Anne rather cattishly described in a letter to Gilbert as "the honeymoon look" was already on her face._

\- _Anne of Windy Poplars, The Third Year, Chapter 7_

The dishes were cleaned, the floors were swept and scrubbed, and not a speck of dust was to be found anywhere in Green Gables. Anne let out a contented sigh as she surveyed her work. Marilla and Mrs. Lynde had looked at her strangely when she told them she'd rather tidy up the house for all the Christmas festivities rather than go with them to help prepare and enjoy the Ladies Aid supper, but she was glad she had stayed.

Avonlea always would seem like home to her, but somehow the gossip and small talk failed to interest her anymore. She hadn't really lived there for the past 6 ½ years, after all, and she hated to have every back story explained to her as if she was a newcomer.

And more than that, Anne had wanted to be left alone with her imagination. No longer was she a princess trapped in a tower, though. Now she envisioned how she would keep her House of Dreams — the little unknown house that would be all hers to put together. All hers — and Gilbert's.

While she had been dusting, she could see the muslin curtains she'd put in the windows. They'd be gathered at the top and trimmed with the lace she'd been crocheting in the quiet, cold nights around the fire at Windy Poplars. And they would let in just enough light to fill their house with sunshine.

The sweeping had been accomplished while she decided which pictures would hang in the living room and which in the dining room and which in the bedrooms. And what kind of flowers she'd plant in the garden. How delightful it would be a year hence to pour over the seed catalogs and decide what to plant at her own home!

She was scrubbing the floor when she settled on a china pattern. It would be the simple white ones with the darling pink rose at the center and the gold leaves and edging that she'd seen the last time she was in Charlottetown. She may not be able to wear pink, but she certainly could have it on her table!

Her little household was fairly mapped out in her mind while she finished drying and putting away the dishes. It was so easy to see herself finishing up making supper in her own kitchen, setting two places at the table, gazing out the window until she saw Gilbert pull the carriage up. Then, she'd rush out to him, and he'd wrap his arms around her and kiss her.

Her work complete, she settled down in the parlor with a book, but her mind, as usual, wandered. She hadn't seen Gilbert since May, when she'd gone to visit him in Kingsport. It had been the longest she'd gone without seeing him since she was 11 years old, and the hours until she'd be with him again the next night seemed to stretch interminably in front of her.

Anne slipped his latest letter out of the front of her book and read it again. Her face flushed and her heart raced as she read it, just as happened the first time she read it and every time she read one of his letters. She had giggled once remembering the flowery compositions that had been Roy Gardner's love letters to her. They seemed so ridiculous now. They could have been written to anyone, really, so bland and generic. Gilbert's letters now — those were love letters, for her and her alone. They were sweet and funny and filled with memories and jokes and thoughts that only the two of them could understand.

_"__I poured over an anatomy book for six hours before my first lone surgery. I so wished for your presence, that you might correct me when I went wrong as when we studied the Aeneid and you badgered me so about how Virgil was warning the Romans about the importance of home. You knew that lesson much better than me. I was certain the whole tale was just an adventure. Of course, you were right, and now I long to abide that counsel and remain at your side always. Though I do hope that we find better things to occupy us than epics or musty old textbooks."_

The thought of seeing him again filled Anne with almost as much joy as the thought that they'd be together always in less than nine months time. She tried to complete construction on her imaginary House of Dreams, but found her contemplations drifting instead to what it would be like to live with him, to wake up beside him, to feel his arms around her not after months but every day.

She looked through the window, frost creeping in at the corners, and watched the snowflakes fall outside. How much cozier the stuffy parlor would seem if Gilbert already were with her. Anne practically could feel herself sitting beside him, her arm brushing against his. And he'd take her hand and she'd lean against him, and their lips would meet and …

A knock on the door interrupted her. She rushed to the door, her face flushed at her musings. Likely the hired man had come to ask if he could leave early or Mr. Harrison had come to complain about something Davy had done.

Anne pulled at the door, and behind the little swirl of snow that blew in was a man, but not the hired man or Mr. Harrison. He wore a black coat on his long frame and a black cap on his head. His face was lean, and his moustache had little ice crystals in it from the December day. His hazel eyes met Anne's and she gasped.

"Gilbert! I didn't expect you until tomorrow!"

"I finished my classes and was able to get out a day early," he said. "I just couldn't wait to see you."

He shook off his boots and stepped into the kitchen. Anne only could stare. How different he looked. If she had thought him a stranger the Christmas before, certainly he seemed even more so now, his physique chiseled by his summer on the railroad crew and his face leaner and matured. Little remained of the boy with whom she had fallen in love, and she felt she scarcely knew the man removing his dripping boots.

Even his voice sounded different. Anne wondered if her voice sounded different. Or did she look different? She was acutely aware of the shabbiness of the blue serge skirt she wore planning only for a quiet day of chores. And of the heat that had rushed to her face, rendering her what she could only assume was a shade of red similar to the hair held back by a long braid.

She fiddled with the hem of her apron and bit her lip as she watched him remove his coat. Only moments earlier she had yearned for Gilbert's presence, and now that he had appeared she found herself strangely mute.

She could feel his eyes on her as she took his coat and hung it up, and the unusual, awkward silence filled the room. Their letters to each other spanned pages and pages, and Anne had found herself of late sharing with him her most intimate thoughts — thoughts that suddenly embarrassed her to have shared. And try as she could, she couldn't seem to recall even one thing they had discussed in their recent letters, or one memory or, really, any point of interest to get her discomfited tongue to move. Her own thoughts seemed to have been drowned out by the sound of her thumping heart, and she wondered suddenly if Gilbert could hear it, too. But she just faintly made out his voice.

"Pretty quiet around here today?" Gilbert asked.

And then Anne could hear her voice, and she had no real idea what she was saying as she walked toward the parlor.

"Oh, yes. I've just been taking care of the chores, and it really isn't as noisy around here as it once was. Even Davy has quieted down some, and of course, Mrs. Lynde and Marilla have never been overly boisterous. Well, Marilla hasn't, anyway." Anne wondered if she sounded as loud to Gilbert as she did to herself. Or as ridiculous. The thumping had been effectively silenced, and she contemplated that it may have been the preferable noise.

As she crossed the room, she felt a hand at her waist pulling her back.

"Anne, is something wrong?" he asked as she turned, her eyes level where his gray tie came out of his white collar.

"No-o, you just surprised me," she said in a deliberately quieter voice.

"I can go and come back tomorrow, if you'd rather," Gilbert said.

Anne's gaze shot up in alarm, and, in his twinkling hazel eyes and that smile that never failed to make her heart beat a little faster, she found back the Gilbert that all the months away and any outward changes could never really change. Her eyes softened as she gazed at him and found herself losing the strange shyness that had overcome her.

"Don't you dare leave," she whispered as his face moved toward hers. "I've missed you far too much to have you go so quickly."

Anne could feel herself relaxing against him and wondered at how something as light as his touch at the small of her back could make her feel so loved. Moments passed in silence, lips too occupied for talking.

"I am glad you're not going to kick me out yet," Gilbert said when they pulled apart. "It is miserably cold out there."

"Ah, and there we have it. Just hanging around until you warm up, I suppose."

Gilbert grinned and winked at her as he plopped down on the sofa in the corner of the parlor. "However long that may take," he said.

She settled in next to him and found the conversation as easy as ever it had been. He told her more about his classes and friends in Kingsport, and she told him how her students had done on their exams and the social scene in Summerside. She already had forgotten that Gilbert looked different to her, and his voice seemed as familiar as her own as she listened to him — with no problem hearing him over the heartbeat that no longer overpowered her ears.

"But I suppose I'm interrupting your reading," Gilbert said as he picked up the book Anne had left on the table beside the sofa and looked it over. "Hmmm, I do believe I recognize your bookmark. And if it was marking your spot, I don't believe it was your book that you were reading. I would say whoever wrote that letter must be quite the fellow. Handwriting looks familiar …"

"Give me that," Anne demanded, her face growing red. She didn't mind, of course, that he knew how she cherished his letters, but she certainly didn't need him to think she was languishing in agony over his absence.

Gilbert held the book in his outstretched arm, making Anne lean over him to grasp at it, which may have been his intent. When her fingers took hold of it, he held on, too, so that her next tug pulled her back onto the sofa and him over top of her.

"Whoops," she said with a giggle as the book fell to the floor. Her now unoccupied hands stroked his brown curls, still damp from his snowy walk, and she pulled him to her.

"I tried to ask this earlier," Gilbert said moments later, a little breathlessly, as he propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at Anne's flushed face, "but where is the rest of the household this afternoon?"

Anne, who very nearly had forgotten anyone else existed in the world, answered uncertainly: "Marilla and Mrs. Lynde are at the Ladies Aid … and Davy, I think will be at the Boulter's until tomorrow … and Dora is … I believe … spending the night with Minnie Mae Barry."

"Quite providential that I got that early ticket out of Kingsport, then, eh?"

"Quite," Anne replied pulling him back down to her.

She sighed and tilted back her head back as she felt Gilbert's lips exploring down her neck and around the collar of her dress. With every kiss, she felt more at ease. Hadn't they spent many lazy afternoons just that way that one beautiful summer they'd had together after her first year at Summerside? Not even Mrs. Lynde's narrowed eyes and grumbles about early weddings had been able to make her uncomfortable about being close to Gilbert. And it was so much easier, there in the empty parlor, to imagine they were alone in their _own_ house than ever it had been in any of their secret haunts.

"Tell me more about this honeymoon look you wrote about," Gilbert whispered as his kisses moved back up her neck to the soft skin under her ear.

Anne giggled. "I think you'll just have to wait and see."

"So, you were just teasing me when you wrote that?"

"Oh, well," Anne began as her unconsciously began playing with his tie, loosening the knot ever so slightly. "Perhaps I was. Or perhaps I was just wishing it was our turn."

"It will be soon," Gilbert replied. And the sensations of his lips on hers and his hand sliding along her side made her forget the months that still stretched in front of them.

But it all came back in a rush soon enough.

At the click of the knob and the creak of the front door opening, they jumped apart. Anne instinctively began smoothing her hair and straightening her apron, while Gilbert tightened his tie. Anne picked up her forgotten book and placed it on the sofa between them as footsteps made their way toward the parlor.

"Say, Anne, have you seen my ice skates? It stopped snowing, and Milty and me are gonna go out on the pond," Davy said as he came in the room. "Oh, hi, Gilbert. I didn't know you were here."

Gilbert gave him a little wave. "I think they're in the closet, Davy," Anne said.

They sat in silence as Davy clanged around in the closet, and not until the front door shut behind him did Anne collapse against Gilbert's chest, shaking her head. Gilbert wrapped an arm around her while his other hand stroked at the ruddy curls that looked a little more unruly than when he arrived.

"I never would have thought Davy would be the tool of a guardian angel," he said with a little laugh.

"I wouldn't think that he was," Anne grumbled. "Though I'm glad it was him and not Marilla and Mrs. Lynde."

Gilbert laughed and kissed her upturned face. "Yes, I believe Davy was the easiest interruption, not that I wished for one. Say, Anne, why did you seem so uncomfortable when I arrived?"

Anne flushed and buried her face against him. "I don't know. I'd just spent the whole afternoon imagining our home and our life together, and I just felt so foolish all of the sudden when you came in and I scarcely recognized you. I … I think I was scared that we could have grown apart. It's been a long nine months."

Gilbert held her closer and laid his head against hers for a moment. "That could never happen. You're as much a part of me as my heart — I couldn't live without you."

"That is nice to hear."

"And darling, just think, next Christmas we'll be in our own home. You'll be decorating the mantle with evergreen, and I'll … well, I'm sure you'll want me to help you, and you know I can't tell you no. And there will be a fire flickering in the fireplace, frost on the windows, the smell of gingerbread."

Anne smiled as she worked her vision into what she already had been imagining before he arrived. It all fit, just as they did.

"And we'll be together every day then," Gilbert continued. "You'll probably be quite tired of me by then."

"Oh, I think it will take longer than that, though one can never be too sure," Anne teased.

"Well, I know I'll never tire of getting to come home to you, that much is for sure. Never, as long as I live," he said with a smile. "Oh, I almost forgot — Mother said to ask you to supper tonight."

"Yes, just let me go change." She looked up at Gilbert a little shyly. "Can you help me with these apron strings? I could get them, but I suppose there is no sense in struggling with them when I have someone to help me."

Gilbert ran his hand down her back to the string at her waist. Anne sighed at the slight shake in his hand as pushed the strings softly forward until his hand rested on the front of her waist. His other hand brushed her long braid of red hair over her shoulder. He kissed the nape of her neck as he undid the knot resting at the center of her shoulders.

"Anything else I can help you with?" he whispered as the apron fell forward.

Anne turned and kissed him before rising from the sofa.

"Perhaps next Christmas."

**(Next up is a request from katherine-with-a-k …)**


	7. Falling in Reverse

**(Thank you all for your lovely reviews on that last chapter, and … yeah, sorry it's taken so long to get another. Along with my regular work writing, I've had a vacation, a sick household. And I had a few false starts on this one, which was a special request from katherine-with-a-k, who wanted me to explore why Anne fell in love with Gilbert. The good thing about the creative process, though, is that I have another story close to written that I decided wasn't hitting quite the note I was going for with this one.**

**So here it is, dedicated to katherine, whose lovely Redmond Diaries have brought us all so much joy and whose earlier stories inspired me to write me own! We'll start with an obvious quote, the moment Anne realized how she really felt about him.)**

**Falling in Reverse**

_She loved Gilbert — had always loved him! She knew that now. She knew that she could no more cast him out of her life without agony than she could have cut off her right hand and cast if from her._

\- _Anne of the Island, Chapter XL, A Book of Revelation_

For just a moment, Anne turned away from her window, and her eyes landed on the trunk sitting in the corner. It contained all of the things she hadn't bothered to unpack when she returned from Kingsport. It also contained one thing she hadn't been able to bear seeing.

Now the lid pushed open with a crash into the wall, and she flung contents from therein, not caring particularly in that moment where the quilts and blankets and towels landed. Her tear-blinded eyes were not much help in the candlelight, but finally her fingers landed on something more solid. She pulled it to her and stumbled back to the window.

She cradled the little white box in her hands for a moment before she opened it. Her jaw trembled as saw it again for the first time since she'd taken it from her pocket the morning after convocation. The little pink heart. Such a lovely little trinket, such a delicate symbol of the history behind it.

The clasp was twisted, the result of Anne's forceful removal of it from around her neck when Phil had told her of the rumors of Gilbert's engagement. Of course they were only rumors, Anne scoffed as she forced her shaky fingers to straighten the clasp, for he never could have been in love with Christine Stuart.

Anne tried to laugh at herself, but, given her condition, the strangled sound had a maniacal quality she never had heard escape her own lips before. Had she not realized, when the thought of Gilbert marrying someone else had brought tears to her eyes and inspired the violence against the innocent necklace, that she was in love with him? It seemed ridiculous looking at it in retrospect, when the wisdom of the present could straighten what had only been blurred lines and hazy images. Of course she had been in love with him then.

But when had she fallen in love with him? There was no single moment — there couldn't be. If there had been, perhaps she wouldn't have missed it. No, she thought, it must have been so gradual, so spread out over time, that she never had recognized what was in front of her while she searched for the vision of love she'd formed in her mind.

The romantic vision she always had wasn't real love; she'd learned that the hard way. Of course she had grabbed for Gilbert's lilies of the valley rather than Royal Gardner's violets as she left for convocation. The lilies fit in her hand just as Gilbert fit in her life.

And hadn't she known it, when her fists tightened into balls for just a moment whenever she saw Christine at his side? And the way she'd blush and have to catch her breath whenever someone mentioned either of them in her presence?

Anne had thought the emptiness she felt when Gilbert released her hand in the orchard at Patty's Place had been the feeling of their friendship slipping away. Now, she knew better; it was so much more than friendship. It was the feeling of part of herself slipping away.

How had Gilbert become that important to her? She couldn't remember how that came to be either. But it seemed obvious now why everything had felt off kilter the past two years. He had become her ground while she flew in the clouds and her logic when life let her down. Hadn't he been the only one who could make her see that all her hand wringing at the desecration of Averil's Atonement into a baking powder advertisement wasn't necessary?

She remembered flinging aside Ruby's first letter to her when she got to Kingsport just because her old friend had mentioned receiving a letter from Gilbert. How her hand shook when she saw that innocuous line.

Anne tried to look out the window, but the rain splattered and smeared against the pane and rendered everything hazy. She couldn't see the trees bent and twisted by the wind. All she saw was a memory. Of Gilbert striding up to Green Gables the night before they left for college and the two of them skipping back through the woods to the little apple tree he had found. She hadn't been willing to admit how much she admired the way he grabbed onto a low branch and hoisted his way into the tree and how he tossed her the best of the apples into her grasp.

Anne placed her right hand over her left, her eyes squinted shut with repressed sobs as she tried to remember the way it had felt when he had done that on the bridge the week before they left for Redmond. She had ended the moment before it started, but even then she couldn't deny the feeling of belonging that came with the tingling, warm pressure of his hand over hers.

She couldn't hold back the sobs any longer at the memory of that beautiful night, with its purple sunset and bright silver moon. There had been romance there, though she had refused to see it at the time. Not only romance, but love. Not the love she'd imagined but something much deeper, much stronger. Something that belonged in her life. And she'd turned her back on it.

If Gilbert died … no, she couldn't imagine it. How would she live, knowing that part of her was gone, too? It would be like living without something vital to her, like a hand — something she may have taken for granted but which was unimaginable to lose. What kind of life would she have without him? Not a life she wanted, certainly.

With one hand at her mouth and one across her abdomen, Anne tried to hold in the spasms of despair that coursed through her. Her eyes burned from the salty tears. Her face was stiff from trying to keep the tears from falling. Every muscle ached as if they could no longer offer her the strength to stay upright. And her head throbbed with all the guilt and anxiety that ran through her mind.

She kneeled at the window, arms crossed upon the frame and head upon her arms. Her legs and skirts were tangled on the ground, but she stayed there, with her silent prayers and silent tears and agonizing thoughts.

Anne knew not whether minutes had passed or hours when the howl of the wind and the beating of the rain on the window ceased. She pulled up her head until her eyes could see that the window again was clear, with just a handful of drops still sliding down. The trees, still moving in the breeze that had softened with the morning, were silhouetted against the pink and orange of the sunrise. The rain that came down in such torrents the night before now made the world sparkle in the new light.

The beauty of the moment stung. At least the wild and unrelenting storm of the prior night had matched the torrent of Anne's soul. Could she ever appreciate beauty again if Gilbert … if he …?

Her eyes were swollen and hot, and so she crept down the stairs and out the door where she might find relief. And she heard a whistling in the distance.

…

Just two words. That's all it had taken.

"He's better."

The stiff, sore muscles of her face loosened, and her drooping eyes widened. She felt like dancing upon the feet and legs that had felt heavy and weary only moments before.

He's better.

The beauty that hurt her as she looked out her bedroom window now thrilled her. The way the sun cast little prisms into the raindrops. The way the feathery, white clouds floated through the blue sky, like boats upon calm water. The way the silver poplar along the lane glistened in the soft light.

Anne stared at that poplar. She hadn't felt one of her little aches for so long that she used to feel when she saw something perfectly lovely. This felt like that, but it wasn't the beauty of the white bark or the silvery green leaves that struck her. It was another memory.

She breathed in, then seemed to forget to let the breath out. The poplar at Echo Lodge. She'd just seen it the day before, really only hours before. But this wasn't that memory. It was much longer ago than that. Late August, late afternoon. It was the first time she'd felt it. The first time she'd noticed Gilbert's gaze. The first time she'd felt her heart beat so hard when she was standing still. The first time at least a part of her had known she was in love with him.

She remembered the lovely words he had said as clearly if she was back there under that poplar again with him, and she heard them over and over again in her mind as she wandered through the trees. Two people walking hand in hand all the way through life. No memories but those which belong to each other. No separation, no misunderstanding.

And then the drive home, when she couldn't remember what she usually would do with her hands. When they were in her lap, she had twisted at her fingers and rubbed at her palms. She had tried to set them at her sides, but then the left one had seemed precariously close to Gilbert's leg. So she turned her palms against her legs and spent the rest of the ride with her arms stiff at her sides. When she thought she couldn't sit like that for another moment, she had glanced out of the corner of her eye at Gilbert, expecting him to look as awkward and rigid as she felt. But no, he had looked as at ease and carefree as ever. Of course, he had the reins to occupy his hands. Or, rather, his hand. Anne had realized for the first time that he almost never used both hands to hold the reins, just his left. His right arm, she had perceived with wide-eyed shock, was draped against the back of the buggy seat. Behind her. Almost, but not quite, around her.

More shocking to her had been the realization that it wasn't the first time they'd ridden like that. But she'd never noticed. Until then, she had been as comfortable around him as around Diana. But somehow everything had changed with his words beneath the poplar. Everything and nothing.

Anne leaned against the poplar with a wistful smile. How wise he was! She felt a pang of regret that her blunder had kept them from having what he had described. Her head leaned back against the tree, eyes closed, hands at her sides running against the smooth bark.

"I'll make it all up to him," she murmured.

She pushed away from the tree and opened her eyes, taking in the majesty of the morning after the storm has gone and peace has returned. She felt a peace in her heart, as well, a calm that hadn't been there for years, since that moment at Echo Lodge, really. Nothing had made sense since then until she heard those two words.

He's better.

Anne began gathering the flowers ravished in the storm, their little stems bent and broken by the wind but their delicate blossoms still lovely even with a petal or two left behind. Soon her hands and arms were filled, and she breathed in their fragrance. All types of flowers mixed together to provide a spicy, sweet, earthy perfume that seemed to match the way her soul felt that morning.

Like love.

She knew the feeling had crept in to her heart so slowly, so gradually, that she never noticed. To think she had told him she'd never love him like that. Even then, part of her knew she loved him; it just hadn't seemed like _that_ kind of love.

She had expected the scent of roses and only that. Not the lilies of the valley that always put her in mind of their studies and their shared ambitions, or the mayflowers that made her remember the way he laughed at her stories and the way she always laughed at his. The irises that harkened back to the summer day when they had come up with those silly Avonlea Notes. The clover and mint that always brought back the night she learned he had given her the Avonlea School. The apple blossoms and cherry blossoms and ferns and firs that recalled their wandering in the woods. The geraniums and pansies and daisies that seemed to speak of their A.V.I.S. days.

That's why Roy Gardner had seemed perfect. He was roses. But not just roses — hothouse roses and orchids and violets, none of which ever had been part of the fragrance of a moonlit garden. She never could enjoy a bouquet that she hadn't gathered in her own hands, that didn't belong to her.

But as Anne buried her face in the spray she collected from the storm refuse, it made sense. It brought back that peace, that calm again and again. The lilies, irises and mayflowers, the clover and the mint, the blossoms and ferns and all the flora that happened upon their path had been so strong that she hadn't noticed when the roses were slipped in among them. But they were there, their tangy sweet scent slowly becoming the strongest of the bunch, made sweeter by the array of memories and experiences that had come before.

Roses alone would never do. They'd only last a moment. It was the variety, the history, the ordinary things of beauty that gave life color.

She didn't just love Gilbert. He was her friend, the one who made her laugh. The one she could talk to for hours and feel like only a moment had passed. They were mirth and companionship and knowledge and adventure and sacrifice.

Anne pulled her bouquet into the crook of her left arm, and with her right hand she pulled out two roses, a white and a pink — his favorite and hers. Funny how she never noticed how well they looked together before. And how much they added to the rest of the flowers.

It was so much more than just roses.


End file.
